With Help, Survivors Confront 9-11 Anew

Local Funeral Director Joins Nyc Volunteers

NEWPORT NEWS — For many families of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, the pain of losing a loved one was only the beginning of their suffering.

Many had no body to bury, no funeral plans to make.

News of the dead has trickled in from ground zero for the last eight months as volunteers continue to try to piece together answers for grieving families.

Those involved in the recovery effort have now identified some 20,000 tissue samples, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in New York City. After the remains are identified, workers and volunteers have had the heart-wrenching task of talking to the families.

One local funeral director, Betti Jean Shahmouradian, volunteered to go to New York to help with the process. Shahmouradian is the funeral director at Bucktrout of Williamsburg Funeral Home and Riverside Funeral Home in Newport News.

For two weeks in April and May, she worked at the medical examiner's office with 20 to 30 others receiving calls once remains were identified. It was Shahmouradian's job to explain to families and funeral directors how the process of retrieving the remains would work.

She'd worked from 2 to 9 p.m. seven days a week and would leave mentally exhausted each night, she said.

"It was gruesome and grueling," she said. "I was just worn out."

But Shahmouradian said that she was determined to complete the two weeks she volunteered for because of her sense of patriotism and desire to help.

She said that many of those who called literally didn't know what to do when they learned that remains had been found. She would advise them to call a funeral home that the family uses or one in the neighborhood. She would tell families how to submit forms allowing an authorization so funeral directors could get the remains to prepare for funerals.

Families responded very differently, she said.

Some had gotten beyond the initial trauma they experienced in September. They'd held memorial services and were calm when they called, Shahmouradian said.

But others were still in shock and struggling to cope.

"Some would go to pieces," Shahmouradian said. "Some would just have been notified just 15 minutes before they'd call."

Shahmouradian said some people would talk to her for about a half-hour. "They just wanted someone to talk to."

Shahmouradian said one woman couldn't remember how to turn on her fax machine after she learned that tissue had been found. "She went to pieces," Shahmouradian said.

Mark Torre, a medical legal investigator at the New York medical examiner's office praised the work Shahmouradian and her counterparts did.

"They did an immense amount of computer entry, helping to release remains to funeral homes as well as other chores," he said. "It was invaluable."

Torre said DNA belonging to 1,100 victims has been identified so far and the work will probably go on for another year.

Sometimes families had to go through the process more than once. Shahmouradian had to ask families to decide if they wanted to be notified every time remains were found. The families also could opt not to be told or to be contacted once the recovery operation was finished, Shahmouradian said.

"The majority that I saw wanted to be notified every single time," Shahmouradian said. "Maybe they didn't want to think of anything being left there."

Shahmouradian said that although the recovery effort definitely prolonged the families' pain, for many it was as if a burden lifted when remains were found.

Shahmouradian said one woman called after her daughter's remains were located and she wanted to know exactly what tissue was found. She told her which two bones had been recovered.

"You could just hear the relief," Shahmouradian said.

Shahmouradian said that she thinks funeral directors were particularly suited to handling these calls because dealing with families who have lost loved ones is what they do every day.

"We're taught to keep a calmness about you no matter what's going on."

Shahmouradian began working as a funeral director and an embalmer after retiring from Clara Byrd Baker Elementary School in James City in 1995 where she was the school's principal. She learned the skills needed to work as a funeral director at the Mid-America College of Funeral Service in Indiana.

But despite her experience as a funeral director, the stress of dealing with the tragedy took a toll on Shahmouradian.

"By the end of the two weeks, you just wanted to be away."

Keith Rushing can be reached at 247-7870 or by e-mail at krushing@dailypress.com